Director Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film “The Shining” sends shivers down the spines of anyone who watches.
The film tells the story of a family’s descent into madness sold by the compelling performances of Jack Nicholson (Jack Torrance), Shelley Duval (Wendy Torrance) and Danny Lloyd (Danny Torrance).
Jack plans to live in isolation with his wife and son as caretaker of the Overlook Hotel. His employer warns that a former caretaker murdered his wife and two daughters, and then committed suicide.
Jack reassures him saying, “You can rest assured, Mr. Ullman, that’s not gonna happen with me. And as far as my wife is concerned, I’m sure she’ll be absolutely fascinated when I tell her about it. She’s a confirmed ghost story and horror film addict.”
Throughout the film Jack becomes increasingly aggressive, culminating in his wife and son running for their lives from the monster Jack has become at the climax.
Danny’s behavior at the beginning of the film with his imaginary friend Tony can be written off as normal childhood behavior, but once his character is in the hotel it is revealed that he has psychic abilities channeled through Tony.
It’s hard to say what exactly is wrong about the Overlook Hotel. Is it haunted? Is it all in their heads?
Whereas a lot of traditional horror gives us a reason to be scared, “The Shining” deliberately avoids an easily describable premise. The lack of a defined evil is what makes this movie so terrifying.
Kubrick accomplishes this in a number of ways, but the most effective one is perspective.
The film’s greatest feature, as is usual with Kubrick’s films, is the cinematography.
The film alternates between objective and subjective perspectives.
An objective framing of a scene detaches the audience from the characters, while a subjective one brings us into the action.
When we see the events through the character’s eyes in this movie it becomes difficult to discern reality from hallucination.
Because of the cinematography the audience is incapable of understanding exactly what is going on, which is terrifying.
Humans love to make sense of what we experience, and when we cannot it scares us.
This is why “The Shining” deserves its place as a juggernaut of the horror genre.